Evidence supporting an association between osteoporosis and loss of alveolar crestal bone is limited. This study investigated that association in a large cohort of postmenopausal women.A cohort of 1,341 postmenopausal women aged 53 to 85 were assessed for alveolar crestal height (ACH) and bone density. ACH was determined from oral radiographs with subjects dichotomized by disease severity. Bone density was assessed by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, with severity determined by worst T score me...

A longitudinal case-control study was performed to measure the association of salivary biomarkers with alveolar bone loss from a sub-sample of 1,256 post-menopausal women enrolled in the Buffalo Women's Health Initiative. From this cohort, 40 subjects with significant alveolar bone loss over a 5-year period were compared to 40 age-matched control subjects having no alveolar bone loss. Several biomarkers were quantitated in saliva collected at baseline by immunoassay. A positive association was n...

Vitamin D is hypothesized to prevent periodontal disease progression through its immune-modulating properties and its role in maintaining systemic calcium concentrations. The authors investigated associations between plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] (collected 1997 to 2000) and the 5-year change in periodontal disease measures from baseline (1997 to 2000) to follow-up (2002 to 2005) among 655 postmenopausal women in a Women's Health Initiative Observational Study ancillary study. Exploratory...

PURPOSE: Few prospective studies have reported on relationships between objective periodontal disease (PD) measures and cancer risk. This association was examined in 1,337 postmenopausal women participating in the Buffalo OsteoPerio Study. METHODS: Oral alveolar crestal height (ACH) was measured using oral radiographs. Incident cancers were adjudicated with medical records. Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) for associations between ACH and incident cancer outcomes were esti...

BACKGROUND: Vitamin D is hypothesized to reduce risk for tooth loss via its influence on bone health, inflammation, and the immune response. The association between plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations and prevalence and 5-year incidence of tooth loss in a cohort of postmenopausal females was examined. METHODS: Participants underwent oral examinations at study baseline (1997 to 2000) and follow-up (2002 to 2005) to determine the number of missing teeth and 5-year incidence of toot...

Osteoporosis is a serious public health concern. Understanding the extent to which a bone density assessment affects change in dietary intake in postmenopausal women is needed. This study investigated whether results of bone density screening tests resulted in reported initiation or change in either dietary and/or supplemental calcium intake. Between 1997 and 2000, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) screening was conducted on 1468 postmenopausal women as part of an ancillary study of the Wom...

BACKGROUND: The extent to which the composition and diversity of the oral microbiome varies with age is not clearly understood. METHODS: The 16S rRNA gene of subgingival plaque in 1219 women, aged 53-81 years, was sequenced and its taxonomy annotated against the Human Oral Microbiome Database (v.14.5). Composition of the subgingival microbiome was described in terms of centered log(2)-ratio (CLR) transformed OTU values, relative abundance, and prevalence. Correlations between microbiota abundanc...

PURPOSE: The Buffalo Osteoporosis and Periodontal Disease (OsteoPerio) study is a prospective cohort study focused on the relationship between the microbiome and oral and systemic health outcomes in postmenopausal women. The cohort was established to examine how the oral microbiome is affected by (and how it affects) periodontal disease presence, severity and progression and to characterise the relationship between the microbiome, lifestyle habits and systemic disease outcomes. PARTICIPANTS: Par...

BACKGROUND: Hypertension and periodontal disease are common conditions among postmenopausal women. Periodontal disease has been found associated with hypertension in previous studies, but data in postmenopausal women is limited. METHODS: We assessed the cross-sectional associations of clinically measured periodontal disease with prevalent hypertension and measured systolic blood pressure (SBP) among 1,341 postmenopausal women enrolled in the Buffalo Osteoporosis and Periodontal Disease (OsteoPer...

The prevalence of osteoporosis and factors associated with treatment initiation after detection of osteoporosis were determined for previously unscreened, postmenopausal women. Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry screening was conducted in 1997-2000 as part of an ancillary study of the Buffalo, New York, center of the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study. A total of 945 women were previously unaware of their bone density, although, for 344 (36.4%), osteoporosis was newly detected through s...

While risk factors for tooth loss in adults have been identified, limited studies describing factors associated with incident tooth loss in postmenopausal women exist. This study assessed both clinical and non-clinical risk factors for incident tooth loss.Postmenopausal women (N = 1341) were recruited between 1997 and 2000 from 1847 eligible Observational Study participants of the Buffalo, NY center of the Women's Health Initiative who had complete dental examinations to assess alveolar bone he...

Results of several studies investigating associations between systemic bone density and clinical attachment loss (CAL) of the soft tissue surrounding the teeth have varied. We investigated these associations in a relatively large study while evaluating potential confounding factors and effect modification by subgingival calculus and age.In a cross-sectional study of 1,329 postmenopausal women recruited from the Buffalo Women's Health Initiative Observational Study, systemic bone density was meas...

Studies have suggested that oral bone loss is independently influenced by local and systemic factors, including osteoporosis. This cross-sectional study of 1256 post-menopausal women, recruited from the Buffalo center of the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study, evaluated the influence of oral infection and age on the associations between osteoporosis and oral bone loss. Systemic bone density was measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. Alveolar crestal height was measured from sta...

Oral bacteria are widely recognized in the etiology of periodontal disease. We investigated the prevalence of subgingival bacterial infection with eight species, tested associations between infection and oral bone loss, and assessed potential confounding factors and effect modifiers of those associations in a large community-based cohort of postmenopausal women.A cross-sectional study of oral health and osteoporosis in 1,256 postmenopausal women recruited from the Buffalo, New York Women's Healt...

The objective of this study is to characterize the association between metabolic syndrome (MetS) and periodontitis in women, for which there is limited evidence.Cross-sectional associations between MetS and periodontitis were examined in 657 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 years enrolled in a periodontal disease study ancillary to the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study. Whole-mouth measures of alveolar crest height (ACH), clinical attachment level (CAL), probing depth (PD), gingiva...

Previous findings of an association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations and periodontal disease may be partially explained by the antimicrobial properties of vitamin D. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no study has investigated the association between 25(OH)D and pathogenic oral bacteria, a putative cause of periodontal disease.The association between plasma 25(OH)D concentrations and pathogenic oral bacteria was examined among postmenopausal females in the Buffalo Osteopo...

Declines in endogenous estrogen levels after menopause can lead to systemic bone loss, including loss of oral bone and alveolar crest height (ACH). However, few studies have assessed both serum 17ß-estradiol (E2) and exogenous hormone therapy (HT) use in relation to oral bone loss.This study examines the associations among serum E2, HT use, and ACH in 613 postmenopausal women from the Buffalo OsteoPerio study. Baseline ACH levels and 5-year ACH were assessed for groups according to E2 level (und...

OBJECTIVE: Self-reported height is commonly used in population obesity research. Evidence has also shown a positive association between depression and obesity. We examined the extent of height misreporting and its impact on body mass index (BMI) calculations and classification, and explored whether depression is associated with height misreporting. METHODS: The Buffalo Osteoporosis and Periodontal Disease Follow-up Study enrolled 1,015 postmenopausal women between 2002 and 2006. Participants sel...

Understanding of longitudinal characteristics of periodontal disease in older females is limited. This study examined 5-year changes in periodontal disease measures among postmenopausal females.Participants were 1,025 postmenopausal, 53- to 83-year-old females who completed baseline (1997 to 2001) and 5-year follow-up (2002 to 2006) whole-mouth oral examinations in a study ancillary to the Women's Health Initiative. Periodontal disease was characterized using probing depth (PD), clinical attachm...

OBJECTIVE: Height loss is common in older women and has been associated with increased morbidity and mortality. In this study, we identified factors that could predict prospective height loss in postmenopausal women. METHODS: Height was measured in 1,024 postmenopausal women, enrolled in the Buffalo Osteoporosis and Periodontal Disease Study, at baseline and 5 years later using a fixed stadiometer. Demographics, lifestyle, medical history, and medication use were assessed at baseline. Stepwise l...

BACKGROUND: There is widespread concern about the use of body mass index (BMI) to define obesity status in postmenopausal women because it may not accurately represent an individual's true obesity status. The objective of the present study is to examine and adjust for exposure misclassification bias from using an indirect measure of obesity (BMI) compared with a direct measure of obesity (percent body fat). METHODS: We used data from postmenopausal non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white women...

Aging invokes physiological changes, such as immunosenescence and inflammation, that could increase host susceptibility to oral microbiome shifts that enable periodontitis progression in later life. At present, there is a dearth of studies specifically evaluating the oral microbiome and periodontitis in older adults. We used high-throughput untargeted sequencing methods and functional metagenomic analyses to assess and compare the subgingival biofilm of postmenopausal women (mean age 71 years) a...

BACKGROUND: Extra-oral translocation of oral bacteria may contribute to associations between periodontal disease and cancer. We investigated the associations among the presence of three orange-complex periodontal pathogens (Fusobacterium nucleatum, Prevotella intermedia, and Campylobacter rectus), two red-complex periodontal pathogens (Porphyromonas gingivalis, Tannerella forsythia) and cancer risk. METHODS: We prospectively followed 1,252 postmenopausal women enrolled in the Buffalo Osteoporosi...

Few studies have reported on the accuracy of self-reported hypertension history among older postmenopausal women, which was this study's objective. Participants were postmenopausal women enrolled in the Osteoporosis and Periodontal Disease (OsteoPerio) study, an ancillary investigation of the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study (WHI-OS) at the Buffalo, New York, clinical site. Participants self-reported their history of physician diagnosed hypertension treated with medication at WHI-OS...

Objective: Hormone therapy can positively impact bone mineral density after menopause. We explored bone mineral density change in postmenopausal women who discontinued hormone therapy after the Women's Health Initiative landmark 2002 trial results were published. We secondarily explored whether usual physical activity modified the results. Methods: Postmenopausal women participating in the Buffalo OsteoPerio study with information on hip bone density, hormone therapy use, and self-reported physi...